In the 1954 hudson hornet, standard you got a wind up clock. You just wound the spring every time you started the car. As long as you drove every few days, you were fine. The fancy option was a spring wound clock but with an electrode that made contact with the spring as it unwound. When the electrode contacted the spring, a solenoid activated which re-wound the spring. Because it was a solenoid and not a motor, this occurs roughly every 15 minutes. In other words, it didn't wait for the spring to be completely unwound. It alternates between being like 85 and 90 percent wound as long as it is connected to the battery. That way, when you disconnect the battery, the clock continues to keep time for a while, but if you let the clock run out completely you may have to manually wind it a bit to get it working again.
In a 1959 European GM car I had, Opel Olympia, there was a 7 day wind up clock, with a little winder under the dash. Guess that was an upgrade from the daily winders.
I'm a bit of a watch guy, so it's cool to hear you talk about this. Before quartz clocks in cars became a thing, there were electric (not electronic) digital clocks in cars. Imagine a roller odometer but for time and constantly being driven. Some cars had mechanical clocks that were automatically wound by a motor every couple hours. Neither were very reliable. Proclaiming that a clock was quartz reminds me of late 90s and early 2000s cars proclaiming that they have ABS. My 2001 has a sticker on the driver's window. Have you ever talked about headlights? It's an interesting evolution, from oil and acetylene to electric to mandated incandescent sealed beams (7" round, then 5.75", then rectangular corresponding to the round sizes) to halogen sealed beams to aerodynamic flush and how the rest of the world never had these regulations. When Ford petitioned the government to allow flush headlights on the 1983 Lincoln Mark VII for styling reasons, the government denied their request. Ford realized they could argue that smooth headlights helped aerodynamics thereby improving fuel economy and emissions and thus increasing safety. The government said "of course you can have aerodynamic headlights!" I'm a lighting geek so that's fascinating as well.
"Proclaiming that a clock was quartz reminds me of late 90s and early 2000s cars proclaiming that they have ABS." or a car stereo as mosfet. :-P The Delcos on my parents' Pontiacs proclaimed that proudly.
my 1972 Volvo 144 is fitted with electric clock.it works by solenoid repeatedly energizing the clock balance spring to contracts and expand, akin to a mechanical watch balance spring.
There was also a fairly brief period when you had electric/mechanical watches. Some even like my old accu-quartz uses a tuning fork, quartz and is mechanical. In a car though to make a movement able to be reliable and accurate would be very costly. Along with the added complication of having to design it to be easily removed for service. Otherwise you'd be cross training mechanics into clock repair.
I remember my father commenting on the clock in our MB w123 when I was young, that that clock was the best clock we've ever had. Anywhere. He never touched it and after 15 years it was roughly 1 min off. Car battery was never changed before that either so it went continuosly from when we bought the car new.
Even on screen clocks have quartz involved somewhere. Computers generally use at least one timing circuit somewhere to synchronize everything on the system bus, and quartz is used to drive the oscillation. (The external signal is just used for reference in periodic updates by more accurate atomic clocks, but system time is still on the device itself.)
@@envisionelectronics You're confusing the OS level referenced time with the hardware level clock used by the processor. GPS or time via cell phone signal only periodically updates the time reference every so many minutes. GPS corrected time is used for stuff like event logging, but quartz signal time is used to synchronize everything else on the motherboard.
1984 I had a 75 nova that had a mechanical clock in it. Car clocks were notorious for not keeping proper time. I read the manual and it said to set the clock regularly and it would eventually keep better time. A month later I was in an accident that totaled the car. The next day I went by the car to take my stuff out of it and the clock time was perfect.
I remember my father commenting on the clock in our MB w123 when I was young, that that clock was the best clock we've ever had. Anywhere. He never touched it and after 15 years it was roughly 1 min off. Car battery was never changed before that either so it went continuosly from when we bought the car new.
@@martinsv9183 My dad has a W123 300D from his dad. My grandpa has never really driven it, since he was a bit disabled. It has only 32.000 km on it now, so its like its new. Also the battery got disconnected often and it even suffered a cable fire once. But its in very good condition today. Unfortunately, I dont like the W123
We had a '78 Nova and I remember owner's manual said to have it cleaned and oiled every two years. Also remember it saying severel resettings, several days apart might be needed to properly adjust the mechanism and keep it in time. My '78 LeMans had a mechanical clock that didn't work. I found an "83 Grand Prix at junkyard that had same dash but a quartz clock that was an exact fit for my LeMans and worked perfectly.
Well dang, this is just my ignorance at play here, but I always figured that when a clock said "Quartz" on it, I just assumed that the "glass" on the face of the clock was made out of quartz! Lmao! I never bothered to look into it. Thanks for the informative video!
I was kind of the opposite. I was confused as a kid when people spoke of a 'watch crystal.' I thought that they were talking about the quartz inside used to keep time.
I get the confusion. You're thinking of sapphire. :-) Both sapphire and quartz are crystalline minerals. Good watches have mineral glass which is scratch resistant but better watches have sapphire glass which is almost as scratch resistant as diamond. So you'll see some watches advertised as having a sapphire crystal and many of those will have a quartz movement inside of them. But don't confuse quartz and sapphire with gems or jewels. Mechanical watches, even affordable ones, use gems (jewels) like rubies at points of contact to reduce friction. I have a Seiko on my wrist that has 24 jewels inside of it. The glass is mineral, not sapphire, because it isn't expensive. It has no quartz movement because it's mechanical automatic. Those jewels are unrelated to ornamental jewels of which my watch has none. And some extra trivia because why not, Seiko helped kill the hegemony of Swiss movements with its quartz movements but now they've transitioned almost entirely to mechanical movements to move upscale into the market. Automatic movements were saved by aspirational marketing (luxury items) and by people who liked mechanical complications. Mechanical watches are classier and more interesting in some ways. Seiko is transitioning again into mechanical movements in part because techies no longer care about high end quartz watches, they get smartwatches.
In the mid to late 60's, Volkswagen dashboard clocks were spring wound automatically with a small 12v motor that would tighten up the clock spring periodically. If you happened to be sitting in the car with the engine off when this happened, you could hear the mechanism go 'ziiiip'. Voila...self winding clock.
Bro, cars are my life, history is my passion. You find the perfect way to merge both of them. Thank you for your time effort and research. Found you recently but love these videos
I remember getting my first car with a quartz clock. It was wonderful to always have the correct time. Prior to quartz, the clock was the first thing that always broke in a car. Something about when the car's battery is wearing out the voltage runs low and overheats the clock. They just need to be serviced but no one ever did because of the bother. So, if you bought a used car back then very often the clock had already broken or would only work for a matter of hours or a day or two. That all went away with the quartz clock.
Well, even with the digital clocks in displays on car computers & infotainment systems today, despite using GPS or the internet to adjust time, still the timekeeping is done using quartz.
Indeed. Rather odd misconception on the video. Furthermore, all computers always have quartz clock for syncing all their binary state change operations, as very fundamental part of the system, even if they didn't include real time clock functionality in first place. So even "software" real time clock relies purely on that quartz crystal on timing, just the same way as any quartz clock, only counting is implemented in software instead of dedicated electronics or mechanics. Often computers have even separate quartz crystals of different specific frequencies for different data buses. And, after all, many have also dedicated real time clock circuitry, with separate quartz crystal.
@@TheSimoc Exactly. I guess it's one of the underrated inventions cuz no one thinks about it. One might say if not for Quartz, we wouldn't have made the giant leaps in computer technology.
Two minutes a week is about average. Two minutes a day and your watch has a problem. +/- 60 seconds per day is considered about the lowest acceptable variance in a mechanical watch. Pretty much any affordable mechanical watch today will be +/- 10-30 seconds per day.
I actually went out of the way to find a factory dashboard clock for my 1992 Honda Civic DX sedan. It is a TINY detail, but not having the clock really threw off my ability to keep easy track of time. I could have just used my phone or worn my watch more often, but I do not like touching my phone while I drive, and wearing a watch in 100+ degree heat sucks. You would think I would have fixed the AC in my car instead of yanking everything out. Nah, instead I got excited when I found a junkyard Civic that still had its clock!
I would argue that quartz has become even more prevalent in newer electric ("screen") cars. What was once something used for keeping a human clock accurate is now the metronome for every future car. That is, rather than ticking once every second*, they tick millions of times per second*. * Actually 32,768 times per second for human clocks, and still only millions for computational operations. Complex integrated circuits multiply the clock upwards inside the die for numerous reasons.
My 83 Camaro has a quartz clock in the center console and it still works. If the original owner would have optioned for the digital radio, it wouldn't have one. I believe 85 was the last year third gen Camaros had them, the Delco digital radio was standard after that.
Fundamentally, you need something that oscillates. Then the clock "ticks" some number of times for each period of oscillation. An electronic oscillator like quartz is much more stable than a slow ticking mechanical oscillator. Typically, the precision increases with faster oscillation. Which is why the best clocks are atoms or ions oscillating hundreds of trillions of times a second.
Back then it was just easier to do a parabolic revolution for reflector involving a single axis, not like there was a lot of computational power to throw at it to determine shaping the beam pattern. Also with glass forming of sealed lenses, spherical or egg shapes are more robust as well as easier to make. The parabolic reflector was often a part of the lamp itself, rather than a reflector separate from the bulb.
Quartz is still used in the RTC of many modern clocks, including clock found in radios or external units. Especially when computers are involved, a clock is used for more than telling time, and crystal resonators are still the most common means to do this.
@@Santor- there are! Capacitors discharge at a know rate so there are also RC circuit clocks. You could also use an LC circuit but I'm not sure how viable that is. Before quartz, they used ceramic oscillators, but I think they use the same piezoelectric property quartz does
The computer still has a 32768Hz quartz tuning fork crystal dedicated to the RTC, to allow an extremely low power clock circuit to operate off a coin cell while the computer is powered off.
I’m going to assume this goes on to reveal that ‘quartz’ timing didn’t disappear but just became so ubiquitous that there was no longer any point in printing the word everywhere, whether such clocks were fully digital or equipped with analogue hands. It’s hard to believe that many are ignorant of quartz oscillators/resonators, considering they’re at the heart of most electronic devices we use every day, though I’ll accept that I have a tendency to overestimate people in general. Thanks for taking the time (no pun intended) to educate the masses about things that many take for granted.
Was thinking something similar as no matter how the time is currently set and maintained on newer electronics or vehicles it is still most likely a quartz crystal oscillator running things and keeping it in check in the mean time, along with all the other things an quartz oscillator is used for.
I'm pretty sure all clocks in modern cars still use quartz timekeeping, they just -can- get synchronized over the air now. Quartz clocks are just so dang cheap and accurate enough that there really is no need to miniaturize atomic clocks for this use-case.
If the clock is integrated into some sort of onboard computer, it definitely is using quartz timekeeping, since computers all do. There's generally a clock crystal in there somewhere.
Saying the computer screen clocks don't use quartz is wrong. It's how the computer keeps everything synchronized internally. Take apart any modern computing device and you're going to find a crystal oscillator in there somewhere. The external signals are just to update periodically in reference to something even more accurate to account and correct for any drift.
Technically there are MEMS oscillators these days which can be used as an alternative to quartz crystal oscillators. But they are not too common yet. There are indeed a lot of quartz crystal oscillators in a car. And one of them will be the time reference for your software clock.
Lol... I worked at that facility featured at 2:54. At the time it was Lucent... Also, there is entire building hidden underground there not easily visible from satellite shots. True story.
Perhaps you can talk about why cars still have cigarette lighters, mostly used for recharging small electronics, but not a regular outlet. Although our new car does have USB ports...and a cigarette lighter.
Most 'cigarette' lighters today are labeled as power ports and specifically say they cannot be used with a cigarette lighter. Many times you must pay to upgrade a power port to a cigarette lighter that can take the heat of the lighter. There are some many accessories that use the 12V of the power port that they cannot remove them. USB ports max out at 5V @ 2.1 amps.
Not cigarette lighters these days, they are automotive 12v outlets because so many devices use cigarette lighter type plugs, but the sockets are not suitable for lighters themselves
@@1988dgs Ok, but my question is, explain why car makers can't put an inverter behind the dash and use a standard house outlet. I'm not an electrician. Break it down so I can understand. I thought "Quartz" was a name brand, like "Corinthian Leather," until I happened upon this video.
Seiko released the first quartz wristwatch that was somewhat mass produced in 1969 and dubbed it the ASTRON it cost an insane amount of money and today is one of the most rare seiko watches out there!
Adjusted for inflation, the Astron would be a $12,000 watch today, which is less expensive than many Grand Seikos. It was a reasonable price for a hand-carved solid gold case, which if sold by Rolex or Omega today would probably start at around 100 grand. So, while it was expensive, I guess you and I have different ideas about what constitutes an "insane amount of money."
@@RockandrollNegro yeah 100 grand for an omega or rolex? Doubtful unless maybe a platinum day date with some diamond indices maybe. But a patek philippe would be a better ballpark for a 100k pricetag neighborhood
I don't want to be rude but I don't think you quite fully understand, quartz didn't go away, it hasn't even started and it won't, quartz crystal oscillators are how anything electronic keeps time, so right now it's in EVERYTHING it's in your watch, your phone, your pc, your car, your screens, your microwave, your samsung smart fridge and even your damn dumb fridge has one, it's the best way we have today to keep timing in electronics, I don't think a day will come when we don't use them in everything if you have something that runs on electricity and has an alarm or times anything, even if it doesn't sometimes it'll still have one
Just about every automaker in the mid-80s to mid 90s had those . They were a way for the manufacturers to avoid putting airbags in their cars. The government gave them the choice of including airbags or automatic belts. Automakers hated airbags so much they engineered those horrible things just out of spite, basically.
My 2001 BMW Z3 3.0i has an analog clock front and center. It’s one of my favorite parts about the interior of the car. I love older cars and all their levers and switches.
Great video and topic. I remember in the 1980s car clocks with the quartz designation. It was especially easy to spot on the Volkswagen cars I drove, having "quartz" very pronounced on the clock face. I am off to your speedo video as you recommended!
Great vid! I’d love to learn more about the electric passive seatbelt that premiered in the 1981 Toyota Cressida and later found its way into many other models from other makers. I had that Cressida and it was so luxurious and refined in its day.
I have to say, of all the modern features in my 2017 Honda, the fact the clock sets itself from my connected mobile phone is one of my favorites. Especially when crossing time zones from eastern to central. I always hated trying to remember how to set the clock on my older vehicles. Mazda at least had the decency to put dedicated hour and minute buttons on my older Mazda 3.
Battery-powered wristwatches from the same era usually had "QUARTZ" written on them somewhere, too. Maybe they still do. Electric wall clocks or alarm clocks that plugged in usually didn't bother with quartz--instead they got their timing signal from the 60Hz oscillation of the AC wall current (50Hz in Europe), which was plenty good enough for everyday use. But if the clock didn't plug into the wall, it didn't have access to that. Quartz clock crystals were a cheap and commonplace thing by the 1980s, used in just about every electronic device--computers and TVs use them too. But clocks advertised it longer than other things.
The use of the frequency is more accurate than quartz over long time. Such a clock never needs to be set on time unless there is a power out an possibly when there is a DST change,
I actually have one of the first quartz watches, a 1972 Omega constellation electroquartz f8192hz. The quartz crystal actually makes a audible high pitch whine.
Great exaction, I always wondered what that means but I never looked into it but now I know 👍
2 года назад
Hello: Superlative video. I am an old man. Many cars in the 20´s, 30´s had an Eight Day clocks (expensives) , I still have one in excellente order and functioning, they suffered little changes even with extreme temperatures...in Patagonia we pass thru -40 C to +40 C and still runs...Cheers from frozen Patagonia.
Well actually quartz still lives on the computers in cars, time is a huge part of calculations of speed, acceleration, rpm and such. And ALL computers, including phones, pcs and the onboard computers of cars STILL use quartz crystals somewhere inside them, not only to get the time but to calculate frequencys, useful for things like wifi and the such. Quartz is love, quartz is life, Quartz is everywhere
I thought that, as cars became more technological and computerized, the usage of quartz is not limited to the clock anymore, but to all the computer systems on the car i.e. the engine management, driving assists, central locking, etc etc
The fancy screens use quartz crystal oscillators as a time reference. Basically all your digital devices do. It's safe to say that any device running software of any kind has a quartz oscillator in them.
I think one thing you forgot to mention is that mechanical clocks have an escapement which relies on the rhythmic oscillation of a mass to keep time, which could be thrown off when subjected to lateral G’s and bumps
in my 75 lincoln continental it has a "digital" clock that's fully mechanical by Cartier. It looks like and basically functions in similar fashion to an analog odometer, but ALOT less reliable. Wish they went with Quartz
Very cool video I never really thought about why clocks in vehicles left, honestly thought just fell out of fashion. Though getting with the times so to speak would have saved some companies though not as many skilled and unskilled labor workers. The auto industry has "got with the time" eventually in that regard and there sure is not near the same amount of jobs in that field in any country. When you cut out labor laborers are also cut.
Since pretty much all electronics use a quartz as a frequency generator for their CPU, and the system time is still calculated by it (although regularly compared to radio or wifi) you could argue that modern cars still have quartz clocks. It's just that instead of the signal going to an analog display or an integrated circuit and some LCD-system it goes into a CPU that than does whatever it wants with it
It's not current but charge that makes quartz deform. Quartz is an insulator but charges cause it to deform at a predictable rate, and a quartz clock crystal is precision cut to have a set resonant frequency, which the clock's oscillator self-tunes to.
A high school friend, back in the mid 90's, had a 2nd gen Ford Temp with a (aftermarket) car phone. Thought that was the cat's meow. Shortly there after, my parents got their first cell phone and then my friend's car phone became a "that's cute" kind of thing 😀
Nice video! Along with the watch industry shrinking, the Swiss also canceled their accuracy trials after they got their asses handed to them by Japanese watch makers a couple times. And all the missing the point “ack-shu-a-lly computers still use quartz crystals so technically they are still ‘quartz’” comments are pretty funny too.
I remember the classic tic tic of a quartz vlock ina a 1979 VW golf (sold as Caribe in Mexico sin golfo means gulf but also playboy in mexican spanish as in Mauricio Garcés 60s movies). For some years Bavarian Crono made those VW dashboard speedometer (tacho) but saldy didnt made that dash clock. High end cars used to have Heuer chronos as far as I know. Quartz became such a famous word than a french disco music band got that name (very famous in Mexico due to La Carabina de Ambrosio show intro and brazilian actress Gina Montes dancing)
I know exactly where the bell labs buildings were, at the border of Naperville/Lisle/Wheaton/Winfield. Watched both of those impressive buildings get built in the early 90's.
The only thing is there's an exception to your statements , Atmos clocks work off of temperature changes and have exist before the 20th century and the predecessor of car clocks was carriage clocks which predate them by centuries. Other than that very interesting video. :)
My car has a mechanical clock. There's an electric contact that closes about every minute and a half that causes the winding mechanism to jump and self-wind so the clock stays running. There's an audible click from the dashboard whenever this happens. And yes, it does keep poor time. Everyday when I get in the car, I verify the clock against my phone, then use the car clock to make sure I reach my destination in time. It does self-adjust the speed faster or slower if you change the time, but that only goes so far since there's no combating variances in weather.
About 10 years ago I used to work at that Alcatel Lucent. It wasn’t a ghost time but was getting there. I was supporting 3000+ end users working in IT.
Cars still have quartz clocks. It’s simply built into the microprocessors that all cars have these days and displayed digitally on a screen. If your vehicle has a GPS mapping program or cellular service the time will occasionally be updated from that connection. If not, then you will periodically have to set the time manually every year or two as even a quartz clock will drift.
All the cars I had had the clock as part of the radio. I currently drive a 2018 car that I bought new (that had the clock on the gps/radio computer screen), but prior to that, the newest I had was 2004. I had one car that had a separate clock. It was a 1980s Toyota, but since it *also* had a radio clock, I basically had two clocks on the dashboard that were never in perfect synchronisation. Also, is that the Naperville AT&T/Lucent/whatever? My dad worked there when I grew up.
My current car has a clock integrated into the onboard entertainment/nav display that synchronizes over the air, but won't automatically sense the time zone or DST--you have to set that manually. But when I'm projecting my phone's map application on the display, it's showing the *phone's* clock, which handles this stuff automatically. So if DST is set wrong, the time will change depending on whether it's mirroring the phone or not.
The Soviet GAZ-21 Volga had car electric clock, but not quartz. The clock had a tiny electric motor which winded up the spring every five minutes. It produced a soft funny buzz when rewinded
My Toyota Sienna slowly gains time, currently it's about 11 minutes fast, but I intentionally keep it fast so that I'm less likely to be late lol. I actually get annoyed whenever I get it serviced and they kindly reset the clock.
For some reason, the clocks in the Camrys are always running a bit slow. Every few weeks or so, I had to add a minute to the clock. My parents always bought Camrys since 1989. I've been in the 1989 (didn't even have a clock), 1996, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2014 model years. I had every model year listed as my car since the 1996 model when I was in high school. My wife bought the 2014 SE model before I met her. Yes, I've driven every generation of Camry since the 3rd generation till the 2nd latest generation. Yes, for some reason, Toyota seems to put slow clocks in every Camry that I had throughout the generations. My 2021 Toyota Venza has GPS synced clock and doesn't need syncing anymore. My 2019 Honda Odyssey also doesn't need syncing. I think it uses my phone or Wifi.
The clock on a vw rabbit is super accurate because it runs off a 10v reducer. On clocks that run “12v”. It goes to 14v while the engine is running. And goes below 12 when the starter cranks the engine. And fluctuates the voltage. But my 1981 rabbit clock is within seconds after months and months
FYI, Tesla's digital system has many crystal clock oscillators made out of .... quartz. Quartz crystal clock oscillators keep the computer system in sync. The computer's Mhz/Ghz clock speed is generated from a quartz crystal clock oscillator. All computerized vehicle management system has a crystal clock oscillator. Some other piezoelectric materials than quartz can be employed. These include single crystals of lithium tantalate, lithium niobate, lithium borate, berlinite, gallium arsenide, lithium tetraborate, aluminium phosphate, bismuth germanium oxide, polycrystalline zirconium titanate ceramics, high-alumina ceramics, silicon-zinc oxide composite, or dipotassium tartrate.
but how does Quartz for for digital watch i.e the ones LED/LCD display like the one show at @5:11 don't have just have an chip (IC) in them which controls the time
You still have a quartz in your car today. Or multiple. The clock is mostly part of the entertainment system and its CPU is clocked by a quartz crystal. The time base for the clock is taken out of this, the kernel of the operating system does this. On modern cpus with variables clocking for energy saving reasons the "ticks" are generated accordingly of what the actual frequency divider is. Or - the car just has a real time clock chip somewhere to make it easy - and - tadaaa - that is a quartz clock too (-:
I’m watching the entire video, and just as he gets to the answer, my mind drifts. And then I hear him say “and that’s it”, so I have to rewind to see what’s it.
I had this one loaner car that had a clock in it about the steep. I noticed the time on it was wrong. I did fixed it. It was in a 2006 Mercury Milan. Mostly the vehicles that I had digital clocks.
I prefer to not know what time it is while driving as then in LA traffic if I think I am late I start to get anxious and upset and that is not a good thing to think about when controlling a thousands of pounds of metal that can kill someeone. I do worry with modern infotainment not setting the clock may not be possible. Especially with things like over the air updates given how computer networking needs to know what time it is.
This is rather amusing because I have a 2008 and a 2011 car, and both of their clocks suck at keeping time. They're two minutes fast within a month of setting them. What the heck happened to make basic timekeeping tech in cars regress so badly?
